Biometrics

A fingerprint authentication solution that uses ultrasonic technology to scan through a smartphone cover made of glass, stainless steel, sapphire or plastic as well as contaminants on a finger, such as sweat or condensation, has been unveiled by Qualcomm. The technology can “detect if you are you under very difficult conditions,” product manager Max Hamel has told NFC World. More

Google is building a framework for mobile payments in Android, a senior executive has revealed at Mobile World Congress. Android Pay will be an API layer that supports NFC and biometrics and will allow developers to incorporate payments, both in-store and in-app, into their applications, SVP Sundar Pichai told delegates in Barcelona. Android Pay is expected to launch at Google’s I/O conference in May 2015.

ZTE‘s latest Android smartphone will let owners unlock it by scanning their retinas with a built-in biometric solution from EyeVerify. Today the Eyeprint ID solution is only a device unlocking mechanism but it could soon… More

A short video published by MasterCard shows Samsung’s new Samsung Pay mobile payment service in action, demonstrating how a user chooses a payment card, authenticates and then holds their phone next to a standard payment… More

Samsung Pay, the tokenized mobile payment system introduced with the Samsung Galaxy S6, will first attempt to use NFC and then fall back to magnetic stripe emulation technology to offer widest compatibility with merchant terminals,… More

Owners of Samsung’s new Galaxy S6 flagship phone will be able to make mobile payments at merchants equipped with both legacy magnetic stripe card terminals and those with contactless POS terminals, Samsung boss JK Shin… More

Apple Pay fraud levels are now “rampant” with every Apple Pay (AP) issuer having seen “significant” provisioning fraud, payments consultant Cherian Abraham claims in a detailed blog post. The fraud levels being experienced “came as a surprise to all”, he writes. “Tokenization, on-device secure storage and biometrics separately and together are formidable, but the soft underbelly proved to be provisioning of cards into AP.”

Windows 10 will support the next version of the Fast Identification Online (Fido) Alliance technical specifications, Microsoft has announced, allowing users to unlock their devices using biometric authentication instead of passwords. “Transitioning away from passwords and to a stronger form of identity is one of the great challenges that we face in online computing, and we believe Fido authentication is the pathway to success,” says Microsoft’s Dustin Ingalls.

First Tech Federal Credit Union is to run a pilot later this year in partnership with MasterCard that will see cardholders being given the ability to authenticate and verify their transactions using a combination of face, voice and fingerprint verification. The pilot forms part of a new US$20m investment by MasterCard in cybersecurity-related technologies that aim to “deliver greater peace of mind for MasterCard cardholders, merchants and issuing banks.”

Visa is to expand its Visa Token Service to more regions, to a range of mobile devices and to online transactions made using its Visa Checkout service in 2015, the payments network has announced, “helping to… More

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has published the first draft of a specification that will be used to introduce an electronic payments system that leverages both mobile payments and Aadhaar, India’s biometrics-based ID system. “This Unified Payment Interface document provides a payments architecture that is directly linked to achieving the goals of universal electronic payments, a less cash society and financial inclusion using the latest technology trends,” NPCI says.

Three quarters (76%) of the UK’s “Generation Z” consumers — aged between 16 and 24 — say they would feel comfortable making a payment using biometric security, a survey conducted by Opinion Matters for Visa Europe has revealed, and 69% believe it would make their lives faster and easier. Overall, Generation Z rated biometrics as a 7 out of 10 compared with non-biometrics at 6 out of 10.

By 2020, smart mobile devices will include embedded biometric sensors as standard, according to research conducted by Acuity Market Intelligence, creating a US$33.3bn a year market for biometric products and services. Authentication fees from 825bn… More

Descartes Biometrics has unveiled Helix, an ear detection and recognition technology that uses a smartphone owner’s unique ear features to lock and unlock their mobile device. “Helix does not require any additional hardware and is capable of processing any qualifying image containing an ear,” the company says. “Possible applications include banking, travel, medical and personnel attendance solutions, as well as application, device and building security.”

Voice control specialist Sensory has released AppLock, a mobile app that can secure other apps on any Android device with multifactor biometric authentication. “This authentication can use the camera to see the user’s face or the microphone to hear their password or both simultaneously for maximum security needs,” Sensory explains. “In just a few seconds, the user can enroll his/her face and voice by simply looking at the phone while speaking the passphrase at the prompts.”

More than 770m mobile apps that make use of biometric authentication will be downloaded annually by 2019, up from 6m this year, Juniper Research predicts. “Fingerprint authentication would account for the overwhelming majority of such apps in the medium term, driven by increasing deployment of fingerprint scanners within mid-range smartphones,” the researchers say.

Three quarters of British consumers aged 16 to 24 (76%) say they would feel comfortable using biometric security when making a payment, with more than half keen to see facial recognition, fingerprints and retina scans replace passwords… More

Samsung could replace the swipe-based fingerprint sensor used on the Galaxy S5 with a touch-based sensor on the Galaxy S6, expected to be introduced in the coming months. “The sensor will work in the same manner as on the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 and the iPhone 5S/6/6 Plus,” SamMobile reports.

Financial services group the United Services Automobile Association (USAA) is to enable its members to use biometric authentication, including face and voice verification, to log in to their accounts on their smartphone. The function is expected… More

The US Patent & Trademark Office has published three patent applications from Apple that relate to both Apple Pay and Touch ID biometric verification. Among the patents is one that includes a “schematic block diagram of an electronic system providing iCloud-based storage and exchange of enrollment finger biometric data,” Patently Apple reports, and one that sets out a way to use NFC or an alternative short range wireless communication technology to download enrolled finger biometric data.